Warp wrote:

>   Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all?

Yes.

My dad owns such a CD. It's Symantec Ghost. (The consumer version.) If 
you boot the CD, it loads Windows XP and allows you to perform Ghost 
restore operations.

Let me tell you: It runs SLOWER THAN MOLASSES! If you thought Linux live 
CDs were slow, you ain't seen nothing yet!

(You'll notice that the Ghost boot CD now no longer allows you to 
perform backups. ONLY restores. To perform a backup, you must "install" 
and "activate" the program over the Internet. But restore you can do 
using the boot CD. Presumably useful if you somehow break your Windoze 
installation and can't boot it to run Ghost...)

>   Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> software does have its advantages.

Absolutely.

I have nothing against having to pay for software. (I have several 
things against M$ products, but the fact that there's a fee isn't one of 
them.) But having to keep track of whether you're "allowed" to be doing 
what you're trying to do can be really which tricky and awkward - even 
if you're *trying* to stay within the law. When companies add features 
to try to "enforce" this, it always makes things more complex.

There is definitely a lot to be said for software that you can just 
*use*, however you feel like using it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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